Urban poverty in India: Issues and perspectives in development

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Abstract
The present paper examines the trends in rural and urban poverty, analyses the interstate variations and explains these in terms of socio-economic factors. It shows that rural poverty declines smoothly with economic development, which unfortunately is not the case with urban poverty. The availability of water supply, toilets and electricity, that are not explicitly incorporated in the official definition of poverty, has also been analysed at the state level as also across size class of urban settlements. It is argued that the small and medium towns have a weak and unstable economic base. As a consequence, most of these are not in a position to generate funds to provide civic services to all sections of population. These towns, particularly those located in less developed states, should, therefore, be the major concern of government policy. Further, overviewing the changing system of governance, it argues that the seventy-fourth Constitutional Amendment, has not succeeded in genuine empowerment of civic bodies. The power now seems to have shifted from the state governments to the financial institutions, international donors and credit rating agencies. Finally, the capacity of the government to generate employment directly through anti-poverty programmes would remain limited. The paper, therefore, recommends that the anti-poverty programmes should primarily be focussed on provision of basic amenities.

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